In the opinion of many, two of the best contestants in this season of MasterChef Canada were on the chopping block at the end of Monday’s episode – the victims of botched cheesecake.

Hours after it was over, eliminated cook Josh Gale sent an Instagram pic of him hugging the reprieved Dale Kuda, saying, “No way I was going to beat the gay Martha Stewart.”

“I got a lot of love for Dale,” the former Vancouver IT technician said in a phone conference Tuesday. “We’re two very different individuals. But on the show he and I clicked, probably because we both like fine dining, the higher end side of food.

“Dale’s a wicked competitor. I know he’s going to bring it the rest of the competition. He will make Canada proud as our gay Martha Stewart. He definitely rocks that role.”

Having said that, Gale admits there’s a possibility that his real best friend on the show, Eric Chong, sabotaged him in the challenge round. A rookie baker, who’d never baked cheesecake before, Gale desperately looked up to the balcony for advice from the contestants who were already safe.

Does he bake the cheesecake in the baking pan alone, or put the pan on top of a tin? Gale did the former on Eric’s advice, and ended up with bottom graham-cracker crust that stuck, the likely result of overheating.

So, we ask Josh, was he sabotaged? And is there a tendency to think of these people as friends and forget they’re competitors?

“Yes and yes,” Josh said.

“I can’t imagine that was his strategy. But if it was, good on him. It worked to a charm and I’ve got to commend the guy, because from everything I saw, he’s played the game to a T. Regardless what angle he was on, I wish him the best. He’s my buddy through and through.

“On the show, Eric and I were literally best buddies, inseparable. Everybody in the Twitter world keeps throwing out #bromance, which is totally true.

He also predicts Eric will ultimately win. “To me there’s always a certain archetype the winner for MasterChef has, and I see that in Eric. He’s extremely humble. At the same time, he’s knowledgeable and willing to go out on a limb.

“Dale is a wicked friend and competitor but to me he cooks in his box. He cooks awesome food, but he cooks what he knows. Eric cooks the unexpected.”

As for Josh, despite leaving MasterChef earlier than he’d wanted, he says the world is short one IT guy. He revealed that, after taping the final show, he took fellow contestant Danielle Cardozo, “to my favourite (Vancouver) restaurant Fable. We were talking to the chef and they opened their doors to me and I’ve been cooking there for the last three and a half months.”

He also spent two weeks in New York at Daniel Boulud’s Michelin-rated Café Boulud.

His long-term goal: to open a restaurant of his own in Vancouver in a few years.

As for MasterChef, Gale will always be intimately tied to the show, courtesy of his tattoo of its most famous chef Gordon Ramsey. He won’t say where it is.

“You might have to get to know me a little better, maybe buy me a few drinks,” he says with a laugh.